WEBVTT

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Now I'm going to read
a time-travel poem.

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And it all started
because of that comment,

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because it took a very
long time for my mother

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to forgive me for being gay.

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And it happened
because she found out

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that my lover is white.

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And so I wrote these
time machine poems,

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and the machine I use
is not like a TARDIS,

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or like a DeLorean,
but it is a white boy.

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"White Boy Time Machine:
Instruction Manual."

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In the beginning there was corn.

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A whole state of boys blonde
as the plants surrounding them.

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Oh, but why am I here?

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It seems important to mention
all the things that went wrong.

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Once my mother loved a field
and fled from the sight

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of its singed body.

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Once my mother kissed my father,
and the corners of his lips

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unraveled and a child
twice his size came out.

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Once the child cried
and cried until someone

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put something in its mouth.

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Near the quarry a population
of humming boy machines,

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humming love songs and
the national anthem,

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humming drive in movies
and pickup trucks,

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humming ball caps and
slow dances and pebbles

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at your window.

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I guess I'm trying
to explain what's

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happening without leaving.

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I took his hand and the
geese came back for autumn.

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I bit his lip and the ash spat
back my grandmother's body.

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I rose from his lap and
the dirt sunk 100 years.

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I laid in his bed and
watched everyone fall

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into their mothers.

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I went back to catch a
boy who fell from a tree

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and the scars folded
back into my knees.

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Don't ask me how.

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Don't ask if I'm a ghost.

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I know.

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I know it sounds strange,
climbing inside a boy

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and crawling out the other
end in yesterday's light.

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Somewhere, somewhere, a
school of metal clad boys.

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Somewhere, somewhere, my
mother is just a girl.

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Somewhere, somewhere, a
man hands her a flower

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and my eyes flicker blue.

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